Sunday, March 21, 2010

Unruffled

So Kelly thinks she can out do my bad news, getting all litigious and getting sued to make her bad patch worse than mine and then Greta’s Grandma died Saturday morning while I was out riding, so there. I think Greta actually wins the bad news, but her mom is actually in the running since she also broke her nose and arm and had like 33 stitches and it was her mom who died – but even still, it could be worse.

Then I rode 3x 4x this week! But I think it was only a few hours, instead of 10-12 which I used to do – but since I’m just barely able to breathe, I’ll take it. Here’s today’s workout – I’m sort of missing about 30% or more of my lung capacity which I didn’t really find out until I went for a run on Friday and saw my HR hit 190 just going up a hill that shouldn’t have got me over 165.

Here’s a short warm up, 1 legged @120-125 watts, then a few Z2 efforts, then I got hot and had to turn on the fan (see the drop) and then the kids kept coming into the garage asking ‘when can we go see the runners’ (there was half marathon going by our house as I was doing this) – so I got distracted and then gave up because they were standing in the garage looking at me. A pretty easy workout but my HR hit 160 at one point. Eeek.

Then yesterday I rode an easy loop and suffered. Like I had balloons in my lungs and that I had smoked for the past 15 years, menthol and probably unfiltered, maybe secretly some Virginia Slims. Because that would be my name if I was a pimp.

So see, I DO live on an island. I might even get to swim in the water near our house this summer as we’ve got an enclosed beach just down the street!

But more importantly from the image below is that you can see my HR WELL over 150 (normally my avg would be in the low 140’s for a 220-240w ride, but instead it was 160 and I saw 180+ a lot, on every hill and anytime I went over 22mph. Sad. But I guess we start somewhere – I’m just starting my workouts from about week 4 in the season, pretending I had some base or something that represented my legs going around and me going somewhere.

And even though I said I wasn’t going to race I probably will because I simply have to.

Because that’s what I do.

Because I just think of the past few weeks as a bad patch and if you stick with it, the bad patch always goes away and then there’s free food and water after the finish line and you get a medal for finishing and sometimes the t-shirt is good. So I’m holding out for life’s good t-shirt and free food. Actually, tomorrow my group at work is going out to lunch but I have to get Sada to an appt so she can get her x-rays for her broken wrist to see if its 2 more weeks with a cast or 4. So there was my free food.

But let’s talk about my awesome and most favorite products for a moment:

I do have to give props to my gloves that I got, about 1/2 the price of anything you’d find at a cycling shop and probably twice as nice. I got these Under Armour cold weather gloves – I’ve worn them down to about 40 degrees and as warm as 65, but was fine either way – I’ve even skied in these recently!

BTW – if you want to check out compression socks, check out the ones from Under Armour, they’re again about 50% less than what you’ll find in the cycling shops and I think they’re $20. They’re a bit less compression than my 2XU but those were $60 and I honestly can’t wear them for too long – except on longer runs and for maybe 2 hours.